Pandemic Reports
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
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- a West Virginia state health office manager approved without verifying compliance to $34M in relief payments for goods and services
- a Silicon Valley businessman "Mark Schena, 60, was convicted last year of paying bribes to doctors and defrauding the government after his company billed Medicare $77 million for fraudulent COVID-19 and allergy tests", requiring only a few drops of blood
Other Notes
Blog readership has improved since the beginning of the month although slower over the last few day.s My Twitter followers had recently swelled up to more than 2 dozen followers--I used to have 3 times that number under the old account--but about 3-4 dropped off recently. I don't track followers but I suspect they are newer followers who had liked more recent tweets. I will often tweet in a nuanced fashion. For example, I oppose attempts to use the 14th amendment to keep Trump off the ballot. If a Trumpkin followed me because of that, they will encounter a flood of Never Trump tweets. On the other hand, leftists attracted to me based on Never Trump tweets will soon encounter a number of unsympathetic right libertarian tweets. It would be interesting knowing why Twitter users follow me. There are few people who share my idiosyncratic collection of opinions. Sooner or later, I'll write something you, dear reader, will disagree with.
Odd dreams. I once in a while write about unusual dreams. Quite a few times they involve academia, although it's been a few decades since I last taught or taken classes. A typical one is sitting for a final exam completely unprepared--which has not happened in real life. My dream last night involved a campus visit--an onsite job interview, expenses paid, usually highly structured with interviews with future colleagues and administrators and a sample lecture based on research interests. (I remember Grambling State's was unusual in that I was also interviewed by a group of students, who quizzed me, among other things, over (negligible) industry/job contacts.) So, this dream was a radically unstructured campus visit, more of a DIY effort when I had to stumble my way across an unfamiliar campus, and I didn't even know the department hair's office location. Somehow, I cross his path in the hallways coming in to work. Now I've been on nearly a dozen campus visits over the years, (most without an offer in the end). The only chaos was the schedule at Bowling Green State, which left little time for my flight out of the local (Toledo) airport about 15 miles from campus. I was shocked to find I had less than an hour to takeoff from campus--and my faculty escort stopped to gas up on the way. It was a nightmare when I got to the terminal; I recall literally racing to the gate, only to find the gate already closed. Yes, somehow, they let me on the plane. (If they hadn't, I would have had to stay overnight in Toledo.) BGSU thought that's why I turned down their offer. Nope. I preferred BGSU over UWM, but UWM offered me a chance to teach graduate classes. BGSU offered an MBA course, but some local textbook author "owned" the course. If they had just white-lied to me, my life might be totally different tody. At UMW and UTEP, I encountered nightmarish academic politics; to this day I've never heard another go through this version of hell. So, in El Paso I'm watching my academic career flush down the toilet when I get word the guy who took my BGSU offer won early tenure. Life sucks. The job market had changed in 5 years from a job seekers' to an employers' market. At that point, I had dropped all my demands; I was willing to settle for teaching service/introductory courses just to keep a toehold in academia.
Hallmark and HMM started their annual Countdown to Christmas. I've seen varied schedules in the past, including hybrid ones retaining some regular programming intervals. See here for HC, here for HMM.
I have some pet peeves over some incompetent tech interviewers. Maybe it's because I have acquired test construction and measurement expertise. I can only remember one exam question over 8 years getting questioned, a test bank question I had already thrown out in grading and assigned to a curve. Sometimes it comes across as a version of NIGYSOB, other times they've used job interviews as a way to get free consulting advice. I've had interviews where I've been quizzed over things not listed in my resume. (In this one notorious example, a RI company had tried to recruit me before CSC Consulting; sometime later, it turned out said company was a CSC client. At the time I was between assignments and getting warned about getting laid off if I didn't bill more which had more to do with failed project bids, beyond my control. So, this project job spec was released perfectly matching my relevant experience; the client dudes had tried to hire me: it should have been a gimme. I got chosen for the gig and was told to book over the July 4 weekend because I had a ton of patching to do to get the project back on track. I arrived on the scene to a hero's welcome. The account rep pulled me aside and told me I had to first meet the DB manager, a formality. Hell no, it wasn't; the dude mentioned a list, none listed on my resume, e.g., DB on Linus (I had a ton of experience with different versions of related Unix) and app server customized applications. I had done app server as part of the EBS apps infrastructure.) None of this was on the requisition. He then paused and argued he didn't need me. I countered I had heard they had scores of unapplied megapatches; he said he had completed all patching and that was a lie. At this point my account rep interrupted begging forgiveness for presenting an unqualified resource and assured him none of my expenses would be billed to the client. (I felt like asking the rep if he wanted to back up the bus over me again.) Oh, and guess who tried to recruit me again after CSC laid me off? Not a chance in hell.
Max is temporarily including supplemental sports coverage, like the NLCS, typically included on TBS, not in my core able lineup. I think they want to offer it in a $10/monthly supplement after the trial. Nope. As an Astros fan, I hoped Fox would cover the ALCS, but it looks like it's just their FS1 channel, for some weird not in my cable bundle either/
